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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [Lords]

First, there is no Ofsted Bill but a report that the Government commissioned. However, Ofsted undertook it completely independently; that applies to the way in which it was carried out and its formulation. It has not yet been published, and the Home Office did not have prior sight of it a month ago. As I believe the hon. Lady knows, it will be published shortly. We shall respond to it as soon as it is published. The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) is right to say that it is important to get the detail right. The detail of policy, procedure and practice on the ground is important. I have no doubt that the commitment that we witnessed in the other place will be reflected here. The Bill builds on a sequence of measures since 1997 designed progressively to strengthen the safeguards for children and vulnerable adults. We have tried to ensure that we learn from tragic events such as the Soham murders and the death of Victoria Climbié. In doing so, we have gone further than any previous Government in introducing a substantial programme of legislation and reform designed to protect children and vulnerable adults—rightly so. I should like to acknowledge that hon. Members from all parties have shown interest and co-operation. We tightened the vetting and barring schemes for those working with children and adults by making operational from 2000 the scheme under the Protection of Children Act 1999, and effecting the protection of vulnerable adults scheme from 2004. Also in 2000, we published the document ““No secrets””, which provided for the first time a framework for local authorities to work with the police, the national health service and the regulators to tackle and prevent the abuse of vulnerable adults. The Criminal Records Bureau was created in 2002, with the task of helping to protect children—and, from 2004, vulnerable adults—by playing a key role in ensuring that unsuitable people were not recruited to positions of trust. In 2003, we passed the Sexual Offences Act, part 2 of which built on the original notification requirements for sex offenders that came into force in 1997, further to ensure that the police are kept informed of their whereabouts. The Children Act 2004 further strengthened arrangements to safeguard and promote children’s welfare. It required key people and organisations to make safeguarding arrangements for children and ensured that agencies worked together through the local safeguarding children boards. All 150 boards were established by the deadline of April 2006. The IMPACT—information management, prioritisation, analysis, co-ordination and tasking—programme is another key reform, which arises from Bichard and is in the process of being implemented. It is designed to improve the police service’s ability to manage and share operational information. The IMPACT nominal index has recently been launched, and enables one police force to identify quickly other police forces that hold information about specific individuals. The code of practice on the management of police information was brought into force in November 2005, and a comprehensive set of supporting guidance in March 2006.